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My First Stirling Engine

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NickG:
Cheers guys,

Yeah, I could have ordered one of the may kits but I thought it'd be nice to come up with my own design to suit the materials I had! Then it wouldn't matter when I mess things up either! I'm still not confident enoough to start chewing into expensive castings, the only success I've had with castings are the pony wheels and hand pump I made for sweet pea (that is all I have done!!)

Nick

sbwhart:
Hi Nick

I'm slowly becomming anti casting. (should that be uncle casting  :hammer:)  quality of casting on the market are not too good. I built a beam engine from a casting set and had to get some of them changed, and with my loco build I've had to change change some castings, quite often you don't know you've a problem until you've spent time maching it.

If I can avoid using a casting in future I will do.

Cheers
 :wave:
Stew

NickG:
Stew,

That's a good point, I don't like machining them either, nothing is definite, the lack of datums etc means it takes a lot of work to get it right. As you say, quality is another issue, someone in our club has had the same experience as you. He was building a twin cylinder I.C engine and the head castings were rubbish. One was porus and the other he couldn't get the correct dimensions out of it. They changed them twice and they were still no good, he ended up making it from the solid and it looks better anyway!

That's another reason I'm not looking forward to sweet pea! There looks an awful lot of metal to take off those castings!

Cheers,

Nick

SPiN Racing:
Really nice looking engine, and congrats on solving all the little issues preventing her from running right!

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